


Stardust

by KethriHolmes



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: I was just writing something and feeling melancholy, Missed Opportunities, Other, Sad Ending, What Could Have Been, it's 1am and I didn't edit this so don't judge me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 01:49:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11957175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KethriHolmes/pseuds/KethriHolmes
Summary: A *very* short piece about a "what could have been" romance. Takes place before Sara Ryder leaves to be part of the Andromeda Initiative.Yes, that fact that the narrator is genderless is intentional. Everyone will read it was whatever gender they feel fits best, which is what I wanted.Yes, it's told backwards. That was also intentional. It's an experiment. Let me know how it goes.





	Stardust

The last time I saw her, I was nervous but she looked so happy. Her bright rainbow hair was carefully curled and pulled back into a ponytail and her space suit fit her perfectly. She was ready, but I wasn’t. I wanted her to stay. I wanted to be selfish. I wanted to grab her hand and pull her through the crowd, away from the launch pad and back to our apartment on Serendipity Way. But I couldn’t pull her back. I couldn’t even touch her. There was a barrier and a line of security officers between us. Even if I could reach her, she would just look at me with her whiskey colored eyes and my hand would let go with my brain ordering it to. After living together for two years, my entire body was attuned to her dream. She wanted to fall asleep among the stars and wake up in another galaxy. Andromeda was her dream, and her family’s, and mine was here, in the Milky Way.

The seven hundred and thirtieth time I saw her, I found her sitting on an observation deck, looking out into the vast emptiness of space, smoking a cigarette that smelled like tobacco and lavender. But space wasn’t empty for her, like it was for me. Every star was a sign of life and she wanted to meet all of them. I sat next to her and she put her head on my shoulder. I breathed in the tobacco and lavender smoke and the coconut of her shampoo. I tried to memorize each of the lines of shimmering gold running through her honey eyes and the way she tapped her fingertips together when she was thinking and every color in her long hair. I had to start now, if I was going to be able to remember it all when she left.

The seven hundred and twenty-ninth time I saw her, we fought. I wanted to go with her so badly, but how could I follow her in her dream knowing that I had given up on mine? How could she, so full of passion and determination and strength, still love me if I left it so easily? She gave me a hundred reasons why I could do almost the exact same thing in Andromeda, but I knew. I knew my place was here. The team I worked with had become my family. She said she needed to think and walked out.

The seven hundred and sixth time I saw her, I barely recognized her. Her usually styled hair was hanging limply around her face and she was wearing a lumpy sweater and leggings that I didn’t even know she owned. I had just gotten back from working my internship with Ambassador Osoba. She had gotten back an hour earlier from saying goodbye to her mom. I could tell she had been crying the whole time. She looked broken and I hated it. She told me about the Andromeda Initiative. She told me she was going to go with her family, for her mom and for herself. She told me she wanted me to go with her. I told her I didn’t know.

The five hundred and fifty first time I saw her, she had just gotten back from talking to her family. She doesn’t mention them much. It doesn’t seem like she really gets along with her father, and twin brother and mother live so far away. I saw her twin, when he dropped her off at the door. They look so much alike. He even has dyed hair, his a shining silver to balance out her rainbow. He’ll probably be around more. Sarah’s mother is dying, killed by her passion. I can see Sarah starting to lose a little bit of hers. She still trains and studies and lives stardust, but she seems more cautious and less energetic. I try to remind her about her passion by pursuing mine even harder, trying to convince her the same way she convinced me.

The one hundred and fifty sixth time I saw her, I hadn’t seen her for a month. I’d had to go home, to Earth, for my father’s funeral and I’d had to stay to help my brother and sister settle the estates. It took a lot of convincing for them to let me go back to her. Sarah was a bad influence who was making me go against my family’s wishes. But my brother was always going to be the better choice to run a business, and Sarah hadn’t influenced me at all. She had just shown me that it always made you happier to follow your passions.

The eighty-fourth time I saw her, I woke up next to her for the first time in our apartment. Just shy of three months but I knew she was exactly what I needed. Before her my life was books and business and going back to Earth to take over the family store. Sarah’s energy and passion radiated from her and you couldn’t help but think of your own dreams and desires. I didn’t want to go back to Earth and sell trinkets for the rest of my life. I wanted to forge my own path. Under her encouragement, I found diplomacy and started taking courses that would lead to me becoming part of the Earth Ambassadorial team. With her cheering me on, maybe I could actually do this.

The seventh time I saw her, she showed up at my door in a flowing midnight ballgown dusted in glitter. Her hair was even more vibrant against the darkness of the dress. She’d heard that I’d never been to the ballet before, and old Earth tradition, and she wanted to take me because it was almost Christmas and why not? So we got dressed up and walked through the Citadel. The only festive thing we could see was a string of lights under the Earth ambassador’s window. Sarah was disappointed. She took her holidays very serious. Her own little set of rooms was covered wall-to-wall in holiday decorations and even had fake snow in places. The ballet was The Nutcracker and we were the only ones dressed up, but Sarah didn’t seem to care. I cared a little, but the look in her golden eyes drew all that in and it got lost in the space behind them. When we got back, she needed help getting out of her dress and I went home in the morning.

The third time I saw her she was waiting at a table, wearing something more modern than anything I had seen her in before. It was clearly inspired by those cut-out dresses that I had seen some Asari wearing, but it had full sleeves that flared at the wrists and was cut much shorter than the usual floor-length version. I quickly came to find that if it went below her knees, she didn’t want to wear it. She told me her name was Sarah and that she wanted to travel, to always be moving forward to new and exciting things. I laughed and told her that I’d never even left Earth. She took that as a challenge.

The next time I saw her, she sat in a food court on the Citadel, looking like she had stepped out of an old twenty-first century club, her dress black and sparkly and scrunched all the way up her thighs, barely covering anything at all. Did she have any reasonable, twenty-eighth century clothes? And her long hair, pulled back into a pony tail, was every color of the rainbow all flowing over each other. This time when she saw me staring, she motioned me over with a crook of her finger. Her food in front of her was untouched and in her lap was a book about space travel, much more advanced than anything I had ever read. While I was trying to figure out what half the words meant, she asked me if I wanted to go to dinner with her. I had said yes before she even got the words out.

The first time I saw her, she was leaning against a building, a cigarette between her lips, looking like a cross between fifties housewife and nineties grunge in her black swing dress covered in skulls and her hair tucked into a matching beanie and combat boots with six-inch heels. I didn’t know what to make of her but I couldn’t look away. She just stood there, staring up into the sky, surrounded by her self-made smoke cloud, watching people go by. She was wrapped up in her own thoughts, but when she finally came back to this plane of existence, she looked over at me and I swear her eyes were filled with galaxies, the space behind them infinite and beautiful and I know I was in love, even then. She put out her cigarette and walked away. I figured I’d never see her again, but I knew I’d never forget.

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't initially intend for this to be written in reverse and I didn't intend for it to be a fanfic, but sometimes fanfic just happens and the reverse order emerged to add some mystery and drama to an otherwise cliche story. I hope. Let me know what you thought and if you want to see more experimental-ish pieces because I have more ideas for stuff like that.


End file.
